Bus blast kills four in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (CNN) -- A bomb blast hit a Sri Lankan army bus Wednesday morning in Colombo's Slave Island district, killing at least four people, including at least two soldiers, and wounding 28 others, military sources said.

According to the military, the bomb was placed inside a roadside hotel and exploded when the bus was passing. Army sources accused Tamil Tiger rebels of staging the attack.

The attack came a day after a Tamil opposition lawmaker was killed when a gunman opened fire on him as he was leaving a Hindu temple in northeastern Colombo. T. Maheswaran was a member of the opposition United National Party. Eleven others were also wounded in the attack.

Sri Lanka's armed forces commanders declared on New Year's Eve that they would crush the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2008.

A truce reached between the government and rebels in 2002 and monitored by Scandinavian observers has been ignored in the past year as fighting between Sri Lankan forces and Tamil Tiger rebels escalated.

The rebels, formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority in the north and east, citing decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. About 65,000 people died before the 2002 cease-fire.

The U.S. State Department designated the Tamil Tigers a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. E-mail to a friend

All About Sri Lanka • Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam • Terrorism